Merchant

First Data Corp. has extended an agreement to provide merchant processing services for customers of Webster Financial Corp. of Waterbury, Conn.

Cam Commerce Solutions Inc., a Fountain Valley, Calif., provider of payment processing systems for small and midsize merchants, said Tuesday that it has agreed to sell itself to Great Hill Partners LLC, a Boston private-equity company.

Consumers will be able to cash checks at Diebold Inc. ATMs that use Valid Systems' check-cashing software, the two companies announced Monday at SourceMedia's third annual Underbanked Financial Services Forum in Miami. Diebold plans to offer the check-cashing services with its Opteva line of ATMs, Margaret Bost, Diebold director of financial industry marketing, tells CardLine. The Opteva ATMs create an image of a consumer's check, verify the user's identity and the check's validity using Valid Systems' software, and pay the consumer the check amount minus a fee, Bost says. Deployers can set the ATM so check-cashers do not need a debit or credit card to use them, she says. Valid Systems already provides software to such banks as Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp and Cleveland-based KeyBank that enables them to offer check-cashing services through tellers, John Templer Jr., the Fort Worth, Texas-based company's CEO, tells CardLine. Consumers must register with a bank by providing identifying information such as a driver's license, fingerprint and Social Security number, he says. Consumers do not need to provide all the information each time they cash a check, so the bank can decide which information it wants customers to use to identify themselves at ATMs, Bost says. The software then examines each transaction to ensure it complies with the Bank Secrecy Act, Office of Foreign Asset Control and Patriot Act regulations, Templer says. It also processes the check's bank-routing and account numbers to ensure the document is legitimate, he says. SourceMedia publishes CardLine.

VeriFone Holdings Inc. is splitting its European sales-management team into two units, the point-of-sale terminal maker announced this week.

Teaching merchant-level sales agents about interchange takes a continuous process, not a one-shot event, experts say. "There is no fast or easy way to learn or teach interchange," Tyler Hurley, senior sales executive for Group ISO, an Irvine, Calif.-based independent sales organization, tells CardLine sister publication ISO&Agent Weekly. "When we work with our agents, it is not just an introductory, one-time training [course]. It is a consistent learning experience for our agents." When merchant-level sales agents understand the complexities of interchange, they are ready to pass that knowledge on to their merchant clients. However, many merchants do not care to learn about interchange, which is not a bad thing, experts say. "We're happy to educate them but, because of time and interest, they don't necessarily want to know," says Jim Hilber, western regional manager for International CyberTrans, an ISO based in Albuquerque, N.M. Merchants generally do not fully understand their processing and interchange rates, but if they are getting what they expect out of them, then they feel "it is a good deal," he says.

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